Hutchinson v. Nettleton

175 Ill. App. 277, 1912 Ill. App. LEXIS 140
CourtAppellate Court of Illinois
DecidedOctober 15, 1912
DocketGen. No. 5,685
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 175 Ill. App. 277 (Hutchinson v. Nettleton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Court of Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hutchinson v. Nettleton, 175 Ill. App. 277, 1912 Ill. App. LEXIS 140 (Ill. Ct. App. 1912).

Opinion

Mr. Justice Willis

delivered the opinion of the court.

Late in the forenoon of January 31, 1911, appellee, a carpenter and retired farmer, residing in Capron, Illinois, while working on a building"' near Capron, fell from a scaffold about nine or ten feet to the ground and was injured. Someone at the place where appellee was injured sent for appellant, a physician of about two years’ experience, residing in the same place. ■ He came and rendered some temporary aid and was told by appellee’s family that his services were not wanted as they wanted a Doctor Johnson from Harvard, Illinois. Appellant informed appellee’s family that if they needed his services, he would come back at any time and he went away. Dr. Johnson was called but was not at home and a Dr. Goddard came in his place. Dr. Goddard did not get there until about 2 o’clock. Shortly before Dr. Goddard arrived appellant was called again by a neighbor of appellee. On the arrival of Dr. Goddard he was told by appellant that he (appellant) was to treat appellee and that Dr. Goddard was only to administer the anaesthetic. Appellant made an examination of appellee’s back and discovered, as he says, that the back was broken. He began making arrangements to reduce the fracture. To do so he procured two boxes, placed them on the table in such a position that one would be under- the shoulders of appellee and the other one would be under the lower part of his back and the supposed fracture would be between. He then had Dr. Goddard administer the anaesthetic, placed appellee on the boxes, caused four men to manipulate his arms and legs back and forth, while appellee stood over the patient with his hands beneath the supposed fracture and lifted the body up and down several times, and, as he testified, he could distinctly feel the fracture reduced. He then placed several layers of cotton wadding next the body then a plaster cast around the body, and then a steel support or rod, and encased this in more plaster of Paris, and then pnt on wadding and kept appellee in this case for about five weeks and attended him from time to time. Appellee has now regained the use of his body and is fully recovered. A controversy arose between them over the amount of the bill. On May 15, 1911, appellant sued appellee in assumpsit, and filed a declaration containing the common counts and a bill of particulars for $1,050, $1,000 of which was for performing the operation and $50 for medical services and supplies from January 31, 1911, to March 20, 1911, to which was interposed a plea of the general issue. A trial resulted in a verdict of $150 for plaintiff, his motion for a new trial was overruled, and judgment was entered on the verdict, from which plaintiff prosecutes this appeal.

Dr. Goddard, a physician of about thirty years’ experience, who, on his arrival, examined appellee’s back, testified that he did not discover any fracture and found what appeared to be, in his opinion, a slight dislocation between the eighth, ninth and tenth dorsal vertebrae. He testified that he would not have used the kind of a brace that appellant used; that he would have depended on the plaster of Paris cast; that the services rendered that day were reasonably worth from $50 to $100 based on the assumption that there might have been some dislocation and fracture. Dr. Johnson testified that, assuming appellee’s injury might have been a fracture or dislocation at the time, the services rendered by appellant were reasonably worth from $50 to $100 for the operation alone. For appellant Dr. Whitman testified that on the same assumption that appellant’s services were worth $500 and if it was not a fracture they were not worth a picayune. Dr. Mitchell testified that assuming that there was a fracture, appellant’s services were worth from $500 to $700 for the entire case. Dr. Swift testified that, assuming that there was a fracture and dislocation, the services were worth from $500 to $1,000, but assuming that there was no serious dislocation, they were worth about $50. Dr. Robert Hutchinson, the father of appellant, testified that the reasonable charges for the services were $1,000. It was admitted that a Dr. Mc-Innes, if'present, would testify, that, assuming the services to have been performed as testified to by Dr. Hutchinson, the services would be worth $500.

There are various circumstances weakening appellant’s claim to recover so much as he now urges. He only charged appellee $575 on his books for his entire services, and told him he would take $500 for a cash settlement. In his bill of particulars he claims $1,050 for his services. He tries to explain this difference by saying that he charged these sums if a cash settlement were made. It certainly is unusual to charge one sum as the expected compensation upon a plaintiff’s books and then charge him as much again if it becomes necessary to sue for it. This, with the difference in values placed upon his services by the physicians, and the doubt existing as to whether or not there was a fracture, may well have tended to weaken the value of appellant’s services in the eyes of the jury, and having thus tampered with his own claim, he cannot complain that the jury looked upon it with suspicion, and the jury may have thought that appellant’s conduct in forcing himself into the case after he knew that the family preferred an older and more experienced surgeon was unprofessional, and they may have believed from the evidence that appellee’s back was not broken, and that the treatment of appellant in setting' the supposed fracture was extremely violent, unskilful and unnecessary from which he was subjected to severe pain and suffered mental anguish, and that the amount of the verdict is as much as his services were reasonably worth. Certainly these were questions of fact where the jury’s finding should not be disturbed, where such finding is not manifestly against the greater weight of the evidence.

In the ninth and tenth instructions given for appellee, appellant was required, in the treatment of appellee, to bring to the case and exercise that degree of knowledge, skill and care which a good physician and surgeon would use in that case under the same circumstances. It is urged that this language was improper, Perhaps some more modern phrase might have been employed, but the Supreme Court in Holtzman v. Hoy, 118 Ill. 534, the cause of action being the alleged neglect and unskilfulness on the part of the defendant as a physician and surgeon in the treatment of plaintiff’s leg for a serious and complicated fracture, said: “The duty which the defendant, as a physician and surgeon, owed the plaintiff, was to bring to the case in hand that degree of knowledge, skill and care which a good physician and surgeon would bring to a similar case under like circumstances. ’ ’ This case has never been overruled or modified and it fully answers the argument and authorities cited by counsel for appellant in support of the criticism of this feature of the instructions.

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Bluebook (online)
175 Ill. App. 277, 1912 Ill. App. LEXIS 140, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hutchinson-v-nettleton-illappct-1912.